Pupil Premium Information

Ursuline College – How we spend our Pupil Premium wisely

2016-17

The school has followed the Ten Point plan for spending this money wisely.

1. Our ambition is for the funding to improve the life chances of the students in our care in terms of their attitudes to learning, their attainment and aspirations for the future. We want our Pupil Premium students to compare very favourably against the national picture for their peers.

2. We have analysed the barriers for learning for our PPG students. Whenever possible the PPG is used, particularly at KS4 to provide bespoke learning pathways. We have used College placements, Thanet Skills Studio and Lighthouse Project to provide energising programmes for young people at risk of dropping out of education or failing to meet their potential. Where there is poor attendance we have used the PPG to provide bus passes and emotional support in school.

3. Our aim is to close the gap between PPG students and other students in the school. We are aiming to improve overall attendance and reduce exclusions. A big focus is improving the relationships and engagement with parents and carers of PPG students. This requires quicker responses to requests for support and analysis of that support’s effectiveness.

4. Our success criteria for the academic year 2016-17 is to improve the attendance of PPG students by 2% overall. To reduce exclusions of PPG students and to improve engagement with parents (we will canvass our parents by questionnaire at the end of the year to gauge whether this has been achieved.)

5. Our strategy is designed to ensure that all our students are engaged in education either in mainstream school or a vocational setting or a mixture of both.

6. The current focus of PPG spending is directed towards both KS3 and KS4. A lot of our spending is aimed at support within school, ie the employment of TAs. This year the TA team are far more strategically deployed with accountability and responsibility for a clear, named, group of students. Students achievements are mapped at KS4, particularly those at risk of becoming NEET and the bespoke programmes are being evaluated.

7. The PPG strategies follow the aspirations of the whole school improvement plan 2016-2017, namely to raise standards and achievement across the school. Our PPG grant will be also used to meet the needs of more able PPG students. We have used the money to pay for curriculum based support activities eg trips abroad for MFL students on PPG and the purchase of online support materials in science. We have not spent money on trips that are purely leisure orientated like Ski Trips and have articulated why to parents and carers. The school has successfully bid for Pupil Premium Plus money to support young people across the Key Stages. The school has worked very effectively with Virtual Schools Kent and has been acknowledged for this by that service.

8. Staff Training. This is an area we are developing. Staff have been told, as have parents, what PPG is and how the school intends to spend it. Staff understand how to bid for PPG money and what the criteria are that are used to decide whether to use PPG monies for a given activity. For an individual child they know what form to ask for and who in the school to approach for advice. (Jo Callingham SENCO and Maria Evans HLTA). Our CPD inset programme has included strategies for stretching the more able, including Pupil Premium more able students.

9. We monitor the progress of PPG students every six weeks. Students who are underperforming are personally mentored by Maria Evans HLTA, and strategies are put in place that are appropriate and time limited.

10. It is our intention this year to put an audit trail onto the school website with regard to PPG spending. This will be in tabular form and simply state the strategy, cost and future evaluation of PPG. This year we will also produce some anonymised case studies for students with PPG funding in KS3, 4 and 5. These measures will not only inform the Governing Body’s legal obligation to parents but will help us to evaluate how effective our strategies have been.